the next giant leap.

From an article in July's GQ ~

[At this moment, NASA] is engaged in work that can be more enduring and far-reaching than anything else this country is paying for. At NASA's inception the government declared that "activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind," and this is one of the few promises in American history that have been kept.

NASA is now fifty. The moonwalk was forty years ago this month. The NASA of yore did the unimaginable in eight years, making good on President Kennedy's assertion that "this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." It succeeded for two reasons: access to a staggering 4.4 percent of the federal budget (now it's half a percent) and, more importantly, perhaps resurgently, a national desire to believe in ourselves–and in something more than ourselves. Since then, NASA, vision flickering, public imagination uncaptured, has stooped to offering belittling practical justifications for spaceflight (GPS, cell phones) that ground and practicalize the sublime, killing its poetry.

In explaining why space is worth exploring, as NASA frequently finds itself doing, there's a mistaken supposition, because–as with anything of real value–the benefits are largely unknown. It's a philosophical matter, almost religious in its insolubility. Why do we need to love or live at all? The answer is in wondering. And NASA is all about wonder.

As is space. As is space. The author then goes on to say ~

Direction doesn't matter when you're weightless. Up and down are no longer markers. I suddenly understood how in space there is only everywhere. And this revelation was accompanied by the fleeting physical knowledge of what it was to leave the earth. I could move in any direction. All was calm and effortless. And to an astonishing degree–astonishing largely because the understanding was so matter-of-fact–this sort of comfort with wonder felt like the goal of both science and spirituality.